Latest news with #LlanoCounty
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Death toll rises past 100 as flash floods devastate Texas — here's how you can help
Days after devastating flash floods swept through Central Texas, the death toll continued to climb to at least 104, as first responders searched the area for survivors, CNN and The New York Times reported. "As we pray for our fellow Texans who have been impacted by the devastating flooding, please donate to support ongoing recovery and relief efforts," Beto O'Rourke, who formerly represented Texas in Congress, posted on X. For those looking for ways to help, O'Rourke included a link to the Kerr County Relief Fund, which is being operated by the Community Foundation of the Texas Hills Country. The Times also pointed to the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department, a volunteer search and rescue organization called Texsar, an Austin-based pet rescue effort, the World Central Kitchen, and a list of individual GoFundMe pages. In the early morning hours of July 4, heavy rains led the Guadalupe River to rise 20 feet in just one hour in the area around Kerrville, Texas, CBS Reported. The Llano River in Llano County, Texas, also reached catastrophic flooding levels over the weekend, cresting at 26.5 feet, according to CNN. The moderate flood level on the Llano River is 12 feet. The suddenness, magnitude, and middle-of-the-night timing of the flash floods caught many local residents completely by surprise. Controversially, local officials did not call for evacuations before the floods hit, a decision some have questioned in hindsight. "Evacuation is a delicate balance, because if you evacuate too late, then you risk putting buses, or cars, or vehicles or campers on the roads, into low water areas," explained Dalton Rice, Kerrville City Manager, per CNN. "It's very tough to make those calls, because what we also don't want to do is cry wolf," Rice continued. Whether or not evacuations would have made a positive difference, the impact of the flooding has been nothing short of catastrophic with at least 104 confirmed deaths and the toll still climbing, per the Times and CNN, and at least 11 still missing. Do you have a backup power source in your home? Yes — a portable generator Yes — a full-on generator I use solar panels No — I don't Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Among the lives lost were 27 youth campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a nondenominational Christian summer camp for girls that had been in operation for 99 years, per the Guardian. "Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy," read a statement issued by Camp Mystic, according to the Guardian. "We are praying for them constantly." Even days later, torrential rains continued to batter the region, complicating search-and-rescue efforts while threatening further flooding, per CNN. While it is not possible to scientifically connect any single severe weather event to human causes, rising global temperatures have increased the severity of climate disasters. A study by Climate Central found that, of the 144 cities analyzed, 88% experienced an increase in hourly rainfall intensity since 1970, with rainfall rates across those locations having gone up by 15%. Rising global temperatures have been largely responsible for this increase, Climate Central found. For every one degree Fahrenheit of temperature increase, "air can hold 4% more moisture, increasing the chances of heavier downpours that contribute to flash flooding hazards," Climate Central said. To avoid the most catastrophic consequences of global temperature increases, it is necessary to significantly reduce the amount of heat-trapping pollution entering the atmosphere. Even small steps like using public transit or riding a bicycle whenever possible can add up to making a big difference. If you are in a position to do so, installing solar panels and a battery system in your home reduces the amount of planet-warming pollution your family generates while also making your home more resilient in the event of a power outage. Again, as mentioned above, the Kerr County Relief Fund and the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department are great places to donate to offer the best local help in response to this tragedy. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Marjorie Taylor Greene's Horrific Comments on the Texas Floods Are Just the Beginning
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Friday morning, heavy rains began pounding Central Texas along the Guadalupe River, rapidly swelling the river basin—by nearly 30 feet in less than an hour—and spurring deadly flash floods. Dozens of children were reported missing from the grounds of Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' summer camp, as floodwaters surged east along the river and ravaged the neighboring city of Kerrville, downing roads and power lines while residents attempted to flee. Federal and local authorities began carrying out rescue missions as more rain overran households in the towns of Burnet and Liberty Hill, extending the damage well into Saturday. By that evening, Gov. Greg Abbott had requested emergency federal aid for six different Texas counties, a declaration that President Donald Trump quickly honored. The floodwaters began receding Sunday morning—only to rise once again as less-severe rains poured into the already-devastated region. As of this writing, flood warnings are still in place for various areas north of Kerrville, including Llano County, where the Llano River's water levels are currently rising. As of Monday afternoon, the official death toll from the weekend stands at 104, with a large majority of those fatalities having occurred in Kerr County—where at least 56 adults and 28 children have perished. That makes these floods some of the deadliest in the country's modern history, and there are likely more reported deaths to come, with dozens of Texans still missing and more flooding forecast throughout the week across the waterlogged towns. Central Texas had been suffering from drought conditions this summer, yet the needed rains landed too suddenly, at too rapid a pace. The remote counties hardest hit are located in what's known as 'Flash Flood Alley,' but the sheer speed at which the rains fell and the rivers swelled was horrific and unprecedented. A catastrophe of this scale and pace spurs urgent questions that seek impossibly quick answers. And, as is sadly typical these days, there are many waiting to provide only wrong answers, with the goal of inflaming political passions and redirecting a state's, and country's, mass grief. You could see this in a manufactured story that went viral this weekend and was even picked up by mainstream outlets: the rumored rescue of two missing girls who'd been clinging for life to a tree. This was an entirely made-up account boosted via Facebook, according to CNN's Brian Stelter, and it served only to provide false hope to grieving parents. Even House Rep. Chip Roy, an otherwise-reliable conspiracist, took to social media to swat down this feel-good hoax. The bigger question, however, was that of preparation—how could Texans have shielded themselves from such hard-falling rains and rapidly rising waters? Many liberals were quick to point out that the Trump administration's steep cuts to the government's weather-monitoring and warning systems likely contributed to inaction and incapacity; elected officials in the harmed areas blamed the local National Weather Service outposts for not providing sufficient forecasts. (As is typical of him, Trump referred to those federal services as a 'Biden setup.') But, at least in this case, none of those explanations holds water. Yes, there are staffing shortages at the NWS stations in San Angelo and in San Antonio, and those exist in part because of DOGE's governmentwide cuts. Still, by all accounts, the meteorologists in place at neighborhood NWS offices did the best they could, having issued consistent warnings of increasingly intense 'downpours' in the days leading up to stormfall. By Thursday evening, as Wired's Molly Taft reported, the NWS had even dispatched a flood watch. It is true that the agency did not predict the exact amount and extent to which the rains would fall and overflow the banks of the Guadalupe River—not least because what unfolded was the worst-case scenario. And that unprecedented severity did not become apparent to forecasters until the early-morning hours of Friday, when most residents were asleep. These remote Central Texas towns may not have widespread cellphone reception, making it difficult for residents to receive timely alerts anyway. Those who might have turned to the internet instead would not have seen anything until around 5 a.m., when the Facebook pages for the Kerrville Police Department and the Kerr County government finally reshared the scarier NWS warnings. Such important details are granular in nature, and it doesn't help when some of Texas' neighbors lob their own conspiracy theories. In Georgia, MAGA congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor posted multiple tweets on X referring to 'fake weather' and 'fake flooding,' doubling down against 'raging liberals' and 'brainwashed zombies' when encountering backlash. 'It's cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation,' Taylor tweeted. 'If fake weather causes real tragedy, that's murder. Pray. Prepare. Question the narrative.' Since it apparently wasn't enough for one Georgia Republican to raise such alarming conspiracy theories, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene joined in on the action, continuing her proud tradition of blaming Jewish space lasers and claiming that a certain 'they' can 'control the weather' in response to historic natural disasters. This time, she's pushing legislation piggybacking off Taylor's nods to cloud seeding and geoengineering (the basis of her prior lies about how 'they can control the weather'), tweeting on Saturday that she had introduced a bill that 'prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.' But cloud seeding and geoengineering experiments are severely limited in scope and unable to power anything even resembling this weekend's rains. So now we've ended up in a place where even a longtime climate denier like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is being forced to push back against Greene and Taylor's disinformation, admitting that there's 'zero evidence' such 'weather modification' could have caused this. Yes, climate change is key to this tragedy. Weather analysts have observed that the flood conditions were exacerbated by a deadly, unlikely combination: northward-bound remnants of the tropical cyclone that flooded southeastern Mexico late last month, which traveled above the long-steaming, constantly warming waters of the Gulf of Mexico (whose alarming temperatures provided fuel last year for ghastly Hurricanes Helene and Milton). A jet stream then carried all this moisture to an especially flood-prone region of Texas, with riverbeds and arid soil and hillsides. This was the worst possible manifestation of this climate change–induced setup. Though the NWS isn't thoroughly sabotaged, our federal systems are woefully unprepared for the summer. By the end of this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will stop transmitting information from military satellites that have been deployed and used historically to measure the paths of extreme-weather disasters like hurricanes. So it's only a matter of time before the Trump administration cuts do fail us. But we won't be ready to take on the future if we don't get straight what's going wrong now. We may find out how bad things are sooner than later: Tropical Storm Chantal is currently flooding North Carolina with inches of rain, and the water is making its way up through the northeast.
UPI
25-05-2025
- Politics
- UPI
No right to information at public libraries, 5th Circuit rules
A Texas county public library did not violate patrons' free speech rights by removing 17 titles from its shelves, an en banc Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled in a 10-7 decision on Friday. Photo by Activedia/Pixabay May 24 (UPI) -- A Texas public library did not violate patrons' right to free speech by removing books due to their content, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled on Friday. The entire appellate court, in a 10-7 decision, overturned federal district court and appellate court rulings finding the Llano County (Texas) Library System erred in removing 17 books due to their content. The courts initially ruled that library officials violated plaintiffs' right to receive information under the Constitution's Free Speech Clause by removing the books and ordered that they be returned to the library's shelves. The plaintiffs are seven library patrons who in 2022 filed a lawsuit challenging the removal of 17 books due to their "content on race, gender and sexuality as well as some children's books that contained nudity," the Austin American-Statesman reported. A federal district court and a three-judge appellate court panel each ruled against the library. The Fifth Circuit appellate court's en banc panel on Friday reversed the prior court decisions and dismissed the free speech claims against the Lloyd County Library System for two reasons. No right to receive information "Plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library's removal of books," Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote in the majority decision. "Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one's right to receive someone else's speech," Duncan continued. "Plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books," he said. "The First Amendment acknowledges no such right." Instead, a patron could order a book online, buy it from a bookstore or borrow it from a friend, Duncan wrote. "All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collection," he said. Such decisions are very subjective, and it's impossible to find widespread agreement on a standard to determine which books should or should not be made available, the majority ruling says. "May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written?" Duncan wrote. "Heaven knows." The plaintiffs "took the baffling view that libraries cannot even remove books that espouse racism," Duncan added. Public library collections are 'government speech' The majority decision also ruled that the library's collection decisions are government speech and not subject to First Amendment-based free speech challenges. Duncan said many precedents affirm that "curating and presenting a collection of third-party speech" is an "expressive activity." Examples include editors choosing which stories to publish, television stations choosing which programs to air and museum officials deciding what to feature in exhibits. "In the same way, a library expresses itself by deciding how to shape its collection," Duncan wrote. He cited another court's ruling that said governments speak through public libraries by selecting which books to make available and which ones to exclude. "From the moment they emerged in the 19th century, public libraries have shaped their collections to present what they held to be worthwhile literature," Duncan said. "Libraries curate their collections for expressive purposes," he said. "Their collection decisions are, therefore, government speech." He called arguments made in the case "over-caffeinated" and said plaintiffs warned of "book bans," "pyres of burned books," and "totalitarian regimes." "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people," one brief filed by plaintiffs claimed, according to Duncan. "Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books," he said. Won't 'join the book burners' Judge Stephen Higginson was joined by six others in a lengthy dissenting opinion. The Supreme Court in prior rulings affirmed the right to receive information and the right to be "free from officially prescribed orthodoxy," Higginson said. "Public libraries have long kept the people well informed by giving them access to works expressing a broad range of information and ideas," Higginson wrote. "But this case concerns the politically motivated removal of books from the Llano County Public Library system by government officials in order to deny public access to disfavored ideas," he said. The majority "forsakes core First Amendment principles and controlling Supreme Court law," he wrote. "Because I would not have our court 'join the book burners,'" Higginson said, "I dissent."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Appeals court rules Texas library can remove books based on content
The Brief A federal appeals court ruled that public library patrons in Llano County, Texas, cannot challenge the removal of books and do not have a First Amendment right to information from a public library. The court's 10-7 decision overturns a prior injunction, stating that a library's collection is a form of government speech and therefore not subject to free speech challenges. This ruling directly contradicts a similar case in Iowa, setting up a potential challenge in the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that public library patrons in Llano County, Texas cannot challenge the removal of books from the library and do not have a First Amendment right to receive information from a public library, calling a library's collection a form of government speech. The decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the decision made by the same court in Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School, which said students could challenge the removal of books, 30 years ago. The court ruled 10-7 in a full court decision to overturn an injunction that required a Llano County public library to return 17 books that had been removed from library shelves. What they're saying Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan penned the majority opinion where judges decided that the decisions that libraries make surround their collections is government speech and not subject to free speech challenges. Duncan compared the decision to remove books from a library collection to a museum curating their exhibits. "Take a deep breath, everyone," Duncan said in the opinion. "No one is banning (or burning) books." The opinion pointed towards briefs calling for the return of the books claiming the decision would lead to book burnings and "totalitarian regimes" and called the arguments made "unusually over-caffeinated." "If a disappointed patron can't find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend," Duncan wrote. "All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collections." The other side Seven of the court's judges dissented from the decision calling the removal of the books a "politically motivated" effort to "deny public access to disfavored ideas." "Public libraries have long kept the people well informed by giving them access to works expressing a broad range of information and ideas," Judge Stephen Higginson wrote in the dissent. Higginson said the majority judges had forsaken "core First Amendment principles." In 2021, a group of community members began working to have several books they deemed inappropriate removed from Llano County public library shelves. A group of seven Llano County residents filed a federal lawsuit against the county judge, commissioners, library board members and the library systems director for restricting and banning books from the three-branch library system. The lawsuit stated that the county judge, commissioners and library director removed several books off shelves, suspended access to digital library books, replaced the Llano County library board with community members in favor of book bans, halted new library book orders and allowed the library board to close its meetings to the public in a coordinated censorship campaign that violates the First Amendment and 14th Amendment. According to the suit, the defendants worked together to remove several children's books that they found inappropriate from library shelves in early fall of last year. Then, after state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, notified the Texas Education Agency of a list of 850 books he found objectionable that were found in school libraries, some of the same titles were removed from the Llano libraries. In 2024, a divided panel from the Fifth Circuit ordered eight of the removed books returned. Both the majority opinion of the 2024 panel and the dissenting opinion from Friday's decision called the removal of the books a political decision. The books at issue in the case include "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent" by Isabel Wilkerson; "They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group," by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak; "It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health" by Robie H. Harris; and "Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen" by Jazz Jennings. Other titles include "Larry the Farting Leprechaun" by Jane Bexley and "My Butt is So Noisy!" by Dawn McMillan. The decision from the Fifth Circuit on Friday is in direct opposition to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled in a similar case in Iowa last year. In the case to decide is Iowa's book ban could go into effect, the appeals court allowed the ban to happen, but ruled that book removal does not fall under government speech. "Contrary to defendants' contention," Judge Ralph R. Erickson wrote, "the Supreme Court has not extended the government speech doctrine to the placement and removal of books in public school libraries." The split decisions could lead to a Supreme Court challenge. The Source Information on the court's ruling comes from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and court documents. Backstory on the lawsuit comes from previous FOX 7 reporting. Information on the decision of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision comes from the Associated Press. Click to open this PDF in a new window.
